Calvary Missionary Blog

At last everything came together for our trip to Nigeria. We arrived on Saturday, November 10, in Jos, the city where we’re working, and we will be leaving on December 2. The teams arrived in time for us to begin work on Monday. Thank you so much for your prayers!

Yes, we’ll miss Thanksgiving, but we’re grateful for this opportunity to make the Living Word of God available to two of the 500+ languages of Nigeria. Please pray that our time together with the teams would be profitable, that all of us and the families we left behind would be healthy, and that our computers would work well!

We pray that you would be filled with joy as you worship Jesus, the Incarnate Word, this Advent and Christmas season.

June 14, 2018Thank you for praying for our trip to Ghana! We’re delighted to be here and be able towork with the Anufo team to help them prepare for printing Genesis throughDeuteronomy. It so happened that a workshop to upgrade some projects to a morecomprehensive version of their translation software program has coincided with our firstweek here. It’s helping the team put in place procedures to be ready for the typesettingof these books.When we return home in July, Tom and I will be working on preparations for checkingwith two projects in Nigeria in September. Pray that we would make good progress.Warmly in Christ,MaryMary and Tom Holman

This last couple of months Tom and I have been going through Numbers and Deuteronomy in preparation for working with the Anufo translation team during our trip to Ghana in May. We’ve received the go-ahead from our supervisors, and we have our accommodation lined up. We’re waiting for confirmation of the dates, which are contingent upon other events happening then. Pray that the dates for our trip, the purchase of tickets, and getting our visas would come together quickly. And pray that we would be well prepared for what we will do with the Anufo team while we’re there.

Tom’s mother, Evelyn, has been home for three weeks since her hospitalization for a fall. We have had a home care nurse, occupational therapist, and physical therapist coming to help her a couple times each week. She’s doing great – she’s able to cruise down the halls with her walker again!

Pray for me and Tom as we begin our second year of Hebrew study and online checking for the Waja team (Mary) and the Anufo team (Tom).

Thank you for praying for our time in Turkey. I’m really sorry I couldn’t keep you updated with daily prayer requests - as I anticipated would happen. It’s been a long time since I’ve stayed somewhere with such obstinate internet.

Carolyn and I are in an airline lounge in Istanbul - waiting for our flight through Paris to Atlanta. The internet seems to be good. I’ll try to send you a coupe photos of the Athletes in Action leaders from the countries we’ve selected to focus on for the next 18 months. I’ll maybe send a monthly update on each country. The general prayer request we have for you is to pray that:

(1) The country leaders will be able to quickly recruit and train many volunteer chaplains to minister in high-level sport teams and clubs.

(2) The country leaders will find open doors in the best sport clubs in their countries - that coaches and club presidents will grasp the concept of “chaplaincy” and be willing to allow one of our newly trained volunteer chaplains to work with that team.

“Drinking from a fire hydrant” was indeed a good description of what our studies of Hebrew and the geography and history of Israel were like. We made some improvement in reading and understanding the Hebrew Bible, and we had good teaching on various aspects that are important in translation. We spent eight full days visiting places that are important in the Bible – usually with at least four different sites in one day! (Yes, we floated in the Dead Sea, but sailing on the Lake of Galilee was lots more fun.) It was exhausting but invaluable, and we loved Israel.

Tom’s mother did well at the assisted living facility, and she really enjoyed visits from her family, including unexpected visits with six of her great-grandchildren. However, yesterday she became dizzy and fell, hitting her head in three places and scraping her arm, so she ended up overnight in the hospital for observation. There was no bleeding in her brain, though. Thank you for your prayers!

I’m going to try again - after 8 days - to see if I can send this email. I wrote it but haven’t been able to send it. Hotel internet in Kusadasi, Turkey is terrible. Let’s see if this will send….

Good Morning from Turkey,

I hope you’re reading this. My attempts to send a message to you in the last days have all been futile. The internet is horrible in our hotel. I’ll keep this really short and see if it will go through.

Prayer Request #2

Thank you for praying for the final preparation for teaching our new training material. Now please pray that the hearts of those attending will be encouraged and motivated by what they are hearing..

The very specific prayer request is that you would pray for the 17 key “players” in our new strategy.

9 Countries & National AIA Leaders

Cameroon, West Africa Silas

Ethiopia, East Africa Tsegaya

Nigeria, West Africa Smart

South Africa Bruce

Togo, West Africa Magloire

Zambia, Southern Africa Collins

Guatemala Cristobal

Honduras Marco Antonio (Not able to be with us in Turkey)

Moldova Ghena

8 "Developers”

Carl Dambman On my Global Chaplaincy Team

Don Zellmer On my Global Chaplaincy Team

Mike Buchanan On my Global Chaplaincy Team

Steve Newman Athletes in Action Campus Ministry - Ohio

Tim Pitcher Athletes in Action Soccer Ministry - Cincinnati

Adam Kjorvestad Athletes in Action Basketball Ministry

Steve Morgan Athletes in Action Soccer Ministry - Kansas City

Dave Johns Athletes in Action Canada - Pro Ministry

Each of the above “Developers” will be matched with a country (Carl will take 2 countries). They have each committed 2 years to helping bring sport chaplaincy to a new level in each of these countries. They will travel 3-4 times to their country and will be on weekly Skype calls with the AIA country leaders.

The prayer request for now is that the Developers and AIA Leaders will actually LIKE each other. We spent months discussing and praying about who should be paired with which country.

If you get this it means I’ve figured a way around the pitiful internet and then I should be able to give you more information. I’ll send you the pairings next time for you to pray for specifically. Pray for the internet. The hotel’s only response is:

“The internet in Kusadasi is not good. Maybe it will be good tomorrow”.

In less than an hour Carolyn and I will be on a plane heading to Turkey. The purpose of the trip is to launch a project that we’ve been working on for over a year. About 40 of our Athletes in Action global leaders will meet to ignite the final fuse that, we pray, will bring about a a major acceleration to our vision of seeing multiplying believers on every team in every sport in every nation.

In the next 10 days I hope I can enlist you to pray for several aspects of this project. I also hope that by praying us through this, you will end up grasping the entire idea and thereby continue in effective prayer long into the future.

Prayer Request #1

The central thrust of this new direction will be to train people to be volunteer sport chaplains. Our ministries around the world are not expanding because it’s just too difficult for potential staff to raise their support. We need to draw manpower from volunteers.

But this type of ministry can’t happen by just pulling anyone off the street and plugging them into a high-level sport club. There needs to be a selection of quality people….and then we need to train them, very well, in the art of ministry to professional and Olympic level athletes.

Three of my teammates have been working for months to put together a great training package. Most of my trans-Atlanta plane flight will be spent fine tuning the material and getting it into its final form. Pray that if anything is missing, or not the best, God will show it to me and my teammates in these last days.

We pray that our Athletes in Action leaders from 9 countries will return home feeling excited and confident to begin this new paradigm.

One prayer request is enough for now. In a couple days I’ll send you the second thing to pray for.

August 16, 2017We leave for Israel in two days, and we’re busy studying and organizing for our trip.We’ve been told that “drinking from a fire hydrant” is a good description of what ourstudies in Israel will be like—too much information to absorb it all! We will need yourprayers! Please also pray that Tom’s mother would do well at the assisted living facility.Several of Tom’s siblings and a grandson will visit her while she’s there.Tom and the S translator are finishing the S Reading and Writing Book (Nigeria). Thankyou for your prayers for that.Your partners in Bible translation,MaryMary and Tom Holman

You met the Thai group in my last message. They had a good day yesterday. Even though they had many good spiritual conversations there was one event that eclipsed everything else. They went to watch the Thai women play in their first soccer match (which they won 6-0). Pranee and Fai know most of the girls on the National Team and have led 3 of them to Christ in the past couple years.

All for of them went to the match and were able to sit down near the Thai team. It just happened that the Princess of Thailand was at this match. Instead of sitting in her VIP box, the princess decided to sit with the regular people…and she came and sat next to our staff team - introduced herself and talked to them. They were pretty much over-the-top thrilled about this. This is another example of how doors can open at major sport events that would never open back home. Pranee said there would be no chance in the world they would ever share the same space with the Princess back in Thailand.

Meet our Team from Singapore:

Our AIA staff and volunteers from Singapore (left to right):

Chris: He’s Malaysian but went to the University in Singapore and then joined Singapore AIA. Praying about returning to start AIA in Malaysia.

Ivin: He’s our Athletes in Action leader for Singapore. Fearless guy. God has used him to create dynamic AIA ministry in less than 5 years.

New Guy: They just met him two days ago at the Marathon event. He’s the manager for 12 of the national level marathon athletes - and he’s a faithful believer.

Justin (JX): The 3rd full-time staff member. The 3 major racial/cultural groups in Singapore are Chinese (76%), Malay (15%) and Indian (8%) Justin is Chinese, Chris is Malay and Ivin Indian. Our three staff have it covered.

Pray for their time with the disciples who are joining the project with our three staff. In addition to the two volleyball players, several others will join us here over the next week. I’ve already given my “join-staff” recruiting pitch to another guy who arrived yesterday.